


a lesson in holding up the sky

by wordsxstars



Series: darling why do you love a storm [1]
Category: Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice
Genre: Addiction, Amelia Shepherd needs a hug, Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm hesitant to tag it heavy angst but, Other, Shonda Rhimes needs to start paying for my therapy, Siblings, also this is Not an omelia fic, amelia antis dni i don't want to hear it, i recognise that's a mildly concerning sentence but anyway, ish?, just want to make that perfectly clear, lets go with that, she is the strongest character in the world no i don't make the rules, since greys kept hurting her i decided to do the same but without the brain tumour, sort of side owen and amelia if u squint but i don't like them so don't squint too hard, this is not a vent fic i just write sad things for fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-26 12:09:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30105747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsxstars/pseuds/wordsxstars
Summary: Derek makes up the centre of her broken little universe, and at five years old, she knows she’d follow him anywhere.When Amelia is fifteen, she discovers that there are other things that can chase away the monsters and bad dreams. Maybe she doesn’t need her brother anymore. Maybe. Maybe the centre of the universe knows how to shift, is capable of moving.(It’s not. She doesn’t need a science class to tell her that.).or: atlas was wrong, the sky was not made to be a weight that is bearable alone.
Relationships: Amelia Shepherd & Derek Shepherd
Series: darling why do you love a storm [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2142912
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11





	a lesson in holding up the sky

**Author's Note:**

> this whole thing is kinda. angst with a hopeful ending?? so hope u enjoy + feel free to leave a comment<3

When Amelia is five, she thinks her brother is a superhero.

Of course, that’s relative to a five year old. But he does a good job of chasing the monsters away, of chasing the bad dreams away. 

The first crack in the universe is her father’s death. And then suddenly, Derek’s job also consists of chasing the echoing gunshots out of her head. 

He also steals her toys sometimes though, so maybe brothers aren’t always good. 

But he sits in bed with her and reads stories, and she watches him reading his textbooks about biology and human brains on the couch. She asks him a thousand questions a second, and he seems to always have a good answer, the right answer. 

Amelia doesn’t know how to hold up the sky alone, she never has. 

Derek’s good at it though, which makes the weight a little easier to bear. 

(Atlas was wrong, it’s definitely a two person job.)

And so her brother keeps chasing the pain away, keeps chasing the bad dreams away, keeps chasing the echoing gunshots out of her head, long after she stops flinching at loud noises. 

He makes up the centre of her broken little universe, and at five years old, she knows she’d follow him anywhere 

When Amelia is fifteen, a friend gives her a pill, and she discovers that there are other things that can chase away the monsters and bad dreams. Maybe she doesn’t need her brother anymore. Maybe. Maybe the centre of the universe knows how to shift, is capable of moving. 

(It’s not. She doesn’t need a science class to tell her that.)

She spirals. 

Hurricane Amelia is what she gets given to her as a nickname eventually. It’s thrown around when she crashes Derek’s car, it’s thrown around when she gets high out of her mind at her uncle's wedding. It’s thrown around again and again and again, until it becomes no more than a jumble of words that she blocks out. 

In the end she lives up to it, because nothing else can get everything to stop hurting, so a hurricane seems better. Especially now that Derek isn’t talking to her because he’s so unbelievably angry, now that her mom can’t quite look her in the eye. (Her father’s eyes, she knows that much)

Her sisters tell her to stop, everyone tells her to stop. The whirlwind gets faster, it’s spinning out of control. _Stop._

She doesn’t. 

And then there’s another crack, a second crack in the folds of the universe, and everyone around her freezes in place. 

When Amelia is eighteen, her brother saves her life.

Medically, she’s dead for three minutes, so it’s not an exaggeration. Overdose. 

She thinks that maybe she’s the only one who’s not surprised. 

Derek finds her, drags her bruised and broken and bloody back from the edge, back from the haze of drugs, back from the darkness, and clings on for dear life. He holds the cracks together. 

Ambulances, flashing lights, hands pushing on her chest, someone shouting her name, pleading. There are fingers wrapped around hers, she knows they aren’t Derek’s. He’s the one doing CPR, the one shouting, the one keeping her alive. 

She would recognise him holding her if she was blind. 

There’s so much pain that she can’t breathe, and then suddenly there’s nothing. The next thing she remembers is waking up in the hospital. 

Derek isn’t there, and something in her heart breaks a little. The third crack. Her mother tells her he doesn’t want to talk to her, he doesn’t want to be around her. Amelia isn’t exactly surprised, but it still hurts. 

She did this to them, she knows that. She screwed it up and pushed him away one too many times until it stuck, and now she doesn’t have anyone. 

But she’s terrified of that pain, that pain of being dead and not being able to breathe and people shouting her name. She’s more scared of that than the pain that comes without the pills, without Derek. 

And so she goes to med school. 

Amelia spends most of the next five years in the library. She stays sober, flat out refuses to give in to the cravings (she’s always been the stubborn one of the family). She studies, excels because she thinks that’s what her father would’ve wanted, that’s what her family wants, and it’s more than enough of a distraction. 

Harvard. Johns Hopkins. She does more than just succeed. She’s one of the youngest in her class, is at the _top_ of her class. 

When she gets the chance to specialise, it isn’t even a choice. Neurosurgery makes her heart beat fast for the first time in years. It’s exciting, it’s impossible and exciting and beautiful. What is it they say? Addicts have to be addicted to something. 

Of course, Derek is top of the field already, so she resigns herself to that shadow. 

It doesn’t matter, they’re not talking much now anyway. 

Internship, residency, fellowship. Specialise, work harder, work more. She becomes good, one of the best, so good that she ends up on a case with Dr Geraldine Ginsberg in LA. 

LA is nice, she likes the sun and the sea a lot more than the memory-filled streets of New York. 

When she gets fired from the case, she doesn’t let it sway her from the surgery, and it pays off. She doesn’t have anywhere to go, but the solution, in the end, is simple. 

Amelia falls back into step with Addison Forbes-Montgomery with terrifying speed. 

She’s always loved Addison, even after everything with Derek, even after they’d gotten that divorce and Addison had stopped being her sister, stopped staying in touch, and left for California.

The practice is nice, it’s a good change of pace. She asks Naomi to hire her because she doesn’t know where else to go. She can’t go to Seattle, that’s Derek’s territory and he’s made it perfectly clear that he wants nothing to do with her after all the shit she put them through. 

She can’t say she blames him honestly. 

Gradually, her focus shifts. Amelia knows that the coding of the universe cannot be rewritten, she knows that the centre will never change. But she’s happy in LA, sort of, and she begs herself to let it keep being enough. 

But then she slips, and it’s naive, and it’s _fine_ because her issue hasn’t ever been with alcohol it’s just the drugs. So it’s fine if she has a glass of wine, it’s fine if she goes to a bar, if- 

Derek gets shot. The fourth crack. 

He doesn’t call her to tell her, so she has to find out from a string of people that mean next to nothing. He’s been talking to Addison more than her, figures. 

Addison pushes her to go to Seattle to see him, and eventually she caves. She meets Meredith Grey, a girl who’s so _pretty,_ who has a great smile, who makes her brother smile and who talks to her with no preconceived knowledge of how many times she’s fucked up. 

Amelia decides she likes Meredith Grey, even if she doesn’t really know her. 

She does the surgery with Derek, and they bitch at each other for hours. She wonders how they got here, from being inseparable, to this cold, stunted conversation. He’s angry, maybe he’s always going to be angry. She deserves it, but that doesn’t mean it hurts any less. 

And then when she leaves, he’s waiting for her by the car outside. 

She hides the surprise that he’s even looking at her, reaching for her keys. 

_Don’t worry, I'm leaving the premises._

And then he starts to talk, and one of those tiny cracks starts to heal. 

They talk about their father, they talk about her. _Loud and fearless_. She likes that, she thinks, and it’s certainly accurate. She doesn’t exactly feel fearless, but being with him here helps. 

He pulls her into a hug, the weight of his arm warm around her shoulders, and Amelia feels a rush of love that she’s missed. She’s missed him, missed him like she’s missed being able to breathe easily.

They don’t talk again, and she leaves soon after to catch the plane to LA, dragging a hand over her eyes and giving him a half smile that gets tentatively returned. They’ve both changed, they’re trying. 

She talks to Charlotte King, after everything, and goes back to AA. She’s trying. 

She orders champagne at a wedding for the group, for the friends she’s made, for the hesitant family she’s started to create. Ginger ale for herself, she’s been sober for almost two months now. Amelia knows a lot about hope, a lot about how dangerous it can be. But she lets herself have it. 

Until someone not paying attention gives her the wrong glass, and _that’s not ginger ale,_ and then it’s a slippery, oh so terrifying slope. 

The drinking stars again, slowly, but then gravity kicks in and everything is in free fall. 

She nearly shatters her Harvard/Johns Hopkins million-dollar-surgical-love child of a hand dancing on a bar, and it hurts like a bitch. Still hurts less than Charlotte revoking her privileges at the hospital, but there’s something raging in her that’s been dormant for a while, and she can’t quite bring herself to care. 

A slippery slope. 

Her best friend dies, she finds the body, she sees the pills she’d used.

Crack five? Six? She’s lost count, she isn’t sure of anything anymore. She picks up the discarded drugs before the police can. 

And then she falls off the rails, hard. 

People see it, everyone sees it. So they try to help, and she pushes and pushes until something in her shatters. 

_I’m worried about you. I think you’re in trouble._

_A humourless laugh, the sea air blowing her hair away from her shoulders._

_If this is trouble, you should try it._

Making Addison cry is something she’ll carry forever, whether it was the drugs talking or not. 

_I love you Amelia, but I won’t love you to death._

The intervention is ugly, it’s ugly and painful and breaks her open, and yanks out the darkest parts of her and throws her family to the wolves. 

And then at some point she’s screaming. She’s screaming at Addison because Addison was only trying to explain about Amelia’s father and her throat is raw and _he was not your dad he was my dad and if you ever tell that story to anyone I will kill you with my bare hands._

And then- and then she leaves with Ryan, she leaves and maybe leaving that day will be her biggest regret. 

No one calls Derek until after, and she’s glad, god she’s so relieved for that, relieved that he wasn’t there to see that side of her. 

They agree to get clean together, Ryan talks about a family, and maybe this is what love feels like. Her gaze catches on the dwindling supply of narcotics. They look harmless, that’s the most dangerous part. 

_One last high._

When she wakes up the next day and Ryan is dead in bed next to her, Amelia wonders if maybe this is it. 

A morbid part of her has always wondered if pain has a limit. She thinks this must be it. It has to be. Surely, this is the universe saying _enough._

Rehab is crack six or seven, she doesn’t know, but it’s a sort of healing as well. She feels something in her settle back into place, once she finally stops wanting to rip herself apart to escape the burning under her skin. 

For six weeks, the earthquake stabilises. Nothing is healing, but nothing is breaking either. She’s still breathing. 

And then the baby. 

The baby, the giant _fuck you_ from whatever higher power it is that seems to be intent on screwing her over. The anencephalic baby for the world-class neurosurgeon. Crack eight, nine and ten, all in one go. 

Amelia thinks that this must be one of the sickest, cruelest jokes that the universe has ever told. 

_It’s Ryan’s baby. I can’t abort Ryan’s baby._

_My life has turned into a horror show._

_My baby has no brain. No brain._

_Amelia, we need to give him to the transplant team now._

_Your father’s waiting for you._

Forty-three minutes. That’s how long her baby lives for, in the end. 

She gets up. She gets to her feet and picks herself up and survives, because god, Ryan would be pissed if she didn’t. 

She doesn’t tell anyone about the baby, not even Derek. Mostly because thinking about it makes her feel like she’s drowning, so talking about it isn’t going to be an option any time soon. 

When she visits Seattle for a surgery with Derek, he looks at her like she’s about to break, and it splinters something in her chest, just a little. So when he finally says it, when he looks her in the eye and calls her _fragile_ because she’s just come out of rehab, she stares right back and says _no._

 _No,_ she is not fragile. She did not walk through every single one of the nine rings of hell and claw her way back again, bloody and broken and bruised, to be called _fragile_. 

But now he gets it, and there’s something like respect in his eyes when he next looks at her. 

So when Derek wraps her in a hug, a real one this time, and tells her that he loves her, she wonders if this is what coming home feels like. 

She’s missed him. And despite everything, despite the hellfire and the breaking and the _pain_ , her brother is still standing here with those clear blue eyes. He can still make the agony ebb away. He can still make the monsters run.

For the first time in far too long, Amelia thinks that maybe, just maybe, she’s going to be okay.

And then when she gets back to LA, there’s James. 

James is- he’s a breath of fresh air, and she’s surprised because she’s forgotten that sometimes the world can give people nice things, happy things, soft things. Normality is a forgotten concept, but slowly she learns about it again. She owes herself that much, to try at least. 

And James is easy to love, easy to fall in love with, easy to be around. He helps her to heal, helps her to smile and reminds her what it’s like to be alive. 

So naturally, when he proposes, she freaks the fuck out. 

She ends up back in Seattle, back to the person that steadies the whirlwind. She isn’t sure anyone is surprised, not really. When it comes down to it, James is more understanding than she would’ve been if the roles were reversed. He tells her to stay in touch, tells her to take care of herself, and then that’s that. Normal is nice, normal is good for her. 

But normal is boring, and she’s never been someone who’s thrived with a normal, boring life. It’s why she went into neurosurgery, after all. 

And it works out okay in the end, because Derek is going to DC, and they need a new head of the neuro department, and he gives it to her. Maybe this is a chance to move forward, to start over, to get away from the memories. 

The other shoe drops. It always does, in the end. 

Anonymity is a fucking hilarious concept actually, when you think about it. It also means absolute shit when the girl she met at AA a week ago is standing right in front of her, looking her in the eye before she blows up her entire life in front of the _entire_ hospital 

_She cannot touch my mother, she cannot operate. She’s a drug addict. She overdosed with her boyfriend and woke up with him dead in bed with her._

_You can’t ever get away from it, can you?_

When Derek just leaves her standing there with half the hospital staring at her, it feels like she’s lost all the air in her lungs. To have everything thrown out, her worst nightmares, the worst parts of her past spiralling through the silent ER. 

Derek leaves her standing there. 

He gets up, and he walks away, and he takes her patient, because he can. 

He leaves her and lets the monsters have her. 

_Fragile._ His words from a year go ring in her head. He tells Owen hunt that, or maybe he doesn’t, but he implies it pretty fucking heavily. 

_How could you do this to me? To me. You’re my brother._

It’s been a long time since she’s felt the sharp sting of betrayal. This time it hurts a whole lot more. 

_I’ve always wanted to protect you ever since dad died._ Something in her chest aches at that when he tells her later, when he says he’s sorry. But it’s a little late for amends. 

And so she moves out of his dream house, finds a nice place to stay in the city for a while. Owen- Owen Hunt surprises her, lets her stay on, keeps her as head of the department. 

Derek goes to DC, and she misses him despite everything. 

Then Nicole Herman’s tumour comes around, and she hasn’t been this terrified out of her goddamn mind since the baby. 

Owen asks her to do a series of lectures, and she’s teaching for the first time in years. It makes her happy, despite the fear, to teach them something, to show them something new. 

Somehow, she makes it through the surgery without killing Nicole, without calling her brother to help. It’s a relief, to finally file away the notes and to finish it. 

And then- and then Derek comes back. 

She’s glad, on one level, that Meredith and Derek are working it out. She can’t really get a read on Meredith, but she isn’t sure that her brother’s wife can get a read on her either. At least the feeling is mutual. 

But he’s back, and she’s trying to be happy but she’s worried that he’s going to throw her to the wolves again. He assures her he won’t, that he’s not going to steal her job, that he’s back to stay because he loves his family. She decides to trust him, because he’s forgiven her for much, much worse. 

They try again, at the sibling thing. 

_I like having you here. You’re my favourite sister._

_Amelia laughs a little at that, tilting her mug of coffee towards him in a mockery of a toast._

_You say that to all of us. But I’ll choose to believe you because you, are my favourite brother._

_Derek smiles at her, and she can feel the cracks healing, can feel everything starting to heal._

It’s been almost thirty years, and she isn’t sure there’s anyone else that she _wants_ as the centre of her mess of a metaphorical, fucked up universe. He’s the only constant, the only person she trusts to be there no matter what, to never leave. 

_I just wanted to make sure you were okay._

So at the end of it all, it makes sense that she’s the last member of his family that he ever speaks to. 

It makes sense. 

When Owen Hunt pushes open the door and tells everyone to clear the room, she doesn’t have time to chat. He’s been confusing her recently, confusing her enough that she doesn’t really want to be around him until she’s figured this out. Also, she has a surgery, so this really isn’t the best time- 

She sees it on his face as soon as he meets her eyes. The smile fades from her lips. Silence echoes around them. 

“Who died.”

It’s not a question, she can see the facts simmering in his eyes even as she asks. She’s seen that face, she’s seen it so many times. Death has been her friend for her whole life, she is no stranger to death. The only question is who. 

“Amelia-”

Pity. That’s pity in his voice, something edging along a line of shock, probably because of the way she’s looking at him. She forces her face into something impenetrable, an attempt to brace for impact. 

“I know the face. I’ve been here before.” She smiles slightly, and it’s humourless. “Everybody thinks that they are the _first_ person in the world to look at another human being like that.” There’s something so so sad in his eyes. “But it’s always the same face.”

Silence. Brace for impact. Inhale. 

_I don’t want to know._ The thought breaks through the wall she's building in her head before she can take it back. She doesn’t want to know. She doesn’t want to know. God, she doesn’t want to know. 

But fear has never paralysed her, and she’s not going to let it start now. When she speaks again, her voice is hard. 

“Who is dead.”

“Derek.”

The world falls apart. 

She always expected it to be louder. 

There’s a ringing in her ears, she hasn’t heard anything Owen said. He moves towards her, to comfort, and she steps out of reach. She thinks he might be apologising, asking if she needs anything, nothing is registering. 

Breathe. 

She doesn’t remember how to breathe. This is shock, she knows it. Medically, she knows what this is. Shock. She hears herself answer him, feels herself backing away to continue scrubbing at her hands.

“It’s fine. Dead is dead. Not a big deal.”

_Dead._

Dead.

They don’t speak again for a long, long time. 

.

The universe as she knows it begins and ends with one room. One sentence. One word. 

_Who is dead?_

_Derek._

Amelia shuts down. 

Gradually, over the coming weeks, she learns the facts as they trickle back to her in the forms of condolences, apologies, pitying stares. 

Owen leaves with April for another tour of active duty. She doesn’t care. 

Every time someone says they’re sorry, she almost laughs. She can’t quite manage it, can’t remember the last time she smiled in a way that was real. 

Amelia knows that the coding of the universe cannot be rewritten, she knows that the centre will never change. 

But what happens when the centre is gone? 

Does the universe keep going? Or does it just cease to exist altogether.

She lives at the hospital for the better part of a year. She schedules surgery after surgery, and each time she cuts into someone’s head she pushes the pain further down, further and further until she can’t really feel anything at all. 

Her family calls, Addison calls, Charlotte calls, Maggie tries to get her to talk. She ignores every single one of them until they give up. 

People stare at her, they stop talking when she walks into a room. She learns to ignore it, to crack a joke to make people laugh, to ease the tension. She shoves it further, and gradually everything fades to numb. 

Richard tries to corner her into meetings, she sidesteps him at least once a week. More surgeries, more work. 

Meredith leaves, and Amelia isn’t really surprised. She’s a runner, Derek is (was) a runner, and she knows now that Meredith is too. 

If she had enough left in her to feel things, she’d probably feel hurt by the lack of a warning from the person she guesses is her sister in law. As it is, the wave of the news just washes over her. It’s almost calming. 

It’s fine. She’s fine. For nine months, she’s fine. 

Until she’s not. 

It’s Richard in the end, who gets the heat of it. 

All he wants is to see if she’s okay, to ask her for coffee. She blows up, and there’s something devastatingly sad in his eyes. 

A hurricane, a bomb. Both are kind of fitting. 

_Because they won’t understand why he is dead, why people always leave, why everyone you give a crap about walks away or is ripped from your world without warning, without reason, in convenience stores and plane crashes and podunk hospitals with podunk doctors who don’t do what they are supposed to do. Which is save people._

Owen is standing there when she looks up, and she hates him with everything in her at that moment. For leaving, for leaving her here alone, for telling her that her brother had died, for looking her in the eye and breaking apart her world.

Amelia leaves, and she’s drowning, so she goes back to the pain relief that she _knows_ works for her. 

A hair-trigger of a line, that’s what she’s walking tonight. 

The doctor who writes her a prescription for the oxy is all too happy to take her money. 

Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.

It’s like a game really, a balancing act. 

The small plastic bag sits heavy in her pocket as she leaves the hospital, as she drives to- she doesn’t know where. Where is home now? 

Back and forth. What’s space without its midpoint? 

She parks outside Meredith's house, outside Derek’s house, and there’s such a roaring in her head. 

The deck outside is hard underfoot, her shoes make too much noise on it. The deck that Derek built all that time ago. The dream house, Meredith had called it. 

Dreams, nightmares, reality. 

Amelia doesn’t unzip her pocket. If she pulls that zip, there’s no going back. It's like a dance, over this line. Back and forth. 

Her phone buzzes in her other pocket, and she doesn’t look. It’s probably Owen again. He's been calling for hours since she walked out, everyone has. 

She knows, somewhere deep in her chest that they’re scared, they’re worried about her. And they probably should be, because she’s standing on the deck of her dead brother’s house with a bag of-

“Hey”

Amelia feels herself go still, turns around. 

There’s a faint glimmer of shock that breaks through the numb, and she takes a sharp breath in. 

Owen takes a step closer, hands relaxed by his side. She wonders how he can look relaxed, she wonders if he feels the need to rip his way out of his skin too. 

There’s a memory here, she’s seen that jacket on him enough times. It soothes something jagged and wild in her, even for a second. 

“It’s good to see you.” His voice is familiar, there’s a half smile there. She can see something like concern in his eyes, and she isn’t really sure what to make of it. 

“Hey.” Amelia’s voice sounds rough even to her own ears. She can’t stop moving, can’t stop because if she stops maybe it’ll catch up to her. Owen is still talking, something about a tree, and she’s not listening anymore, can’t feel anything other than a need to _get out, get out, get out_. She needs to wake up from this, to snap out of this dream. 

They never teach you how to survive being locked in your worst nightmare

“Okay.” He says, and she hasn’t responded to anything Owen’s been saying, doesn’t know how to breathe, let alone speak. “I’ll see you around.”

And then he’s leaving, and she’s drowning, and everything is screaming white noise and the drugs weigh nothing and all too much in her pocket, and she wonders. She wonders what Derek would say if he could see her now. 

_If you ever think about doing drugs again, I'll fly down to LA and kick your ass._ The memory flickers through her mind, the half smile when he’d told her that.

She doesn’t know why she says it, but at the same time she does. 

“I have a baggie full of black market oxy in my coat pocket.” Owen goes still, she can see the blurred outline of his shoulders in the dark. “And I’m trying to decide whether or not to take it.”

Inhale. Exhale. Hair-trigger line. She doesn’t think she’s taken a breath for nine months, doesn’t know if she remembers how.

Owen turns towards her, and there’s a flickering sort of pain in his eyes. There’s a shattered part of her that revels in it, that aches to make someone understand a _fraction_ of what has been killing her for almost a year. 

Or what would be killing her. Maybe. If she could breathe. 

She pulls the tiny bag of oxy out of her pocket, flips it between her fingers, flaunts it because she can. So insignificant, so very earth-shattering. Black and white, right and wrong, light and dark.

She doesn’t want to feel it anymore. 

The shock of seeing him here is wearing thin, dissolving back to something numb, cold. 

“Got the dead Derek thing completely managed.” Amelia says, and almost laughs. “I know people were worried. Since he died everybody’s been looking at me, waiting for me to fall apart, or freak out or just- become a mess. Like some bomb that everyone thinks is supposed to go off.”

She doesn’t blame them. Her track record with grief isn’t exactly stellar. Her father was shot and it started with one pill, ending years later with her in hospital. Her best friend died and it ended with an overdose and one dead fiancée. Ryan died and she had the baby. The baby died and she had James. James proposed and she bolted to Seattle, right back to Derek, the only person who’s ever made the pain stop completely. And then Derek died-

Derek died and she’s back to where it started. Full circle. It’s almost poetic. 

Owen looks shocked. She knows he hasn’t seen this side of her before, hasn’t seen the wild, unchecked, _dangerous_ side. Good. She wants to shock someone, wants to scare them, wants to make their heart stop dead in their chest as their entire fucking _world_ collapses around them.

_Who is dead?_

_Derek_

“My mother?” Amelia continues, and she thinks she might be smiling now, an achingly sardonic twist of her lips because it’s either smile or scream, laugh or drown. “Was calling three, four times a day. Addison was calling, everyone.” Charlotte had called her once, and she’d hung up before the other woman had started to speak. “It makes sense.” The oxy is back in her pocket now, she doesn’t want to see it because then it's a carousel of memories of _Ryan_ and _the baby_ and _it’s Ryan’s baby_ and _my baby has no brain_ and _who is dead? Derek._ “It’s natural.”

Owen is still staring at her, wordless. She hates him, wants him to shout, wants something to shatter, wants something to break because maybe, maybe that would make this hurt less 

“Every man I’ve ever loved has died, including my baby. So thank you, universe!”

Pity, she can see pity in Owen’s eyes, and she wants to scream at him, wants everything to stop, wants people to quit asking her if she’s _okay_ when the one thing that makes up the centre of the universe, the one thing that has never shifted, is _gone._ It doesn’t make sense, how can it? She doesn’t know how to live in this world, in this world without her brother. 

Amelia doesn’t know how to hold up the sky alone, she never has. 

And so she lets it fall instead, standing in the cold air of the night as the world caves in around her. 

(Atlas was wrong. It was never made to be a weight bearable for just one person.) 

What’s space without its midpoint? She’s never been her own anchor. Derek is (was) that centre and now he’s gone and slowly the world slips and caves in and falls to pieces and she’s not surprised, not really because everyone leaves, everyone dies. She’s not surprised. 

But god, god it hurts. All the other pain in her life has _nothing_ on this. 

“So I should be like- Greek tragedy turned to stone bat crap crazy but I’m good, I got this, I am _fine_.”

Owen doesn’t believe her, she doesn’t believe herself. He just keeps staring at her, so much in his eyes. And so she keeps going, because she needs him to stop looking at her like she’s gone insane.

“I’m telling you, I’m amazing.” She laughs then, and she can feel the shake in her own voice, feel her hands trembling violently by her sides, and the cracks are widening too fast for her to keep up. “I’m saving lives left and right. I am putting butts in the seats of that OR gallery, I mean people are _fighting_ to hear me lecture. I am _entertaining_ .” Derek once told Meredith that she was a laugh a minute, she knows. She’d heard him say it. Deflect, smile, she’s always been good at that. “Joke, joke joke I’m _funny_ , I’m _fun_ , _I’m a party_ . I’m doing- I’m _great_.” 

She can’t get enough air into her lungs, it’s all shattering in front of her eyes. And Owen can see nothing but a girl in a beaten down leather jacket, with a bag of drugs heavy in her pocket. 

“I’m handling the dead Derek thing really well.”

The two words do not belong in the same sentence, Amelia knows this more surely than she knows how to breathe. It makes her feel sick to think it, to say it. 

“Okay.” 

She gets the strangest urge to laugh because she hasn’t seen Owen Hunt in _months,_ and the only thing he can think of saying is _that_. But she’s started talking again, and she wants to just shut up and leave, she knows he won’t stop her. He’ll want to stop her, but he won’t. She’s a grown woman, she can make her own choices. 

Amelia also knows that this choice, if she makes it, might kill her. 

So she keeps talking. 

“Except today I- yelled at Richard. He was only trying to invite me for coffee.” There are too many people to apologise to, to hit a reset button with. “And then I went and scored oxy from this junkie doctor-”

“But you haven’t taken any?”

“Not yet. But I might” 

Her lips twist into a half smile and it’s, taunting, the kind of person she was all those years ago at the intervention, with Ryan, with Addison, with Charlotte. When she’d said awful _awful_ things to get them to look away from her shattering into a thousand pieces. 

But maybe that hadn’t been the real breaking. That pain was the opening act to this, the calm before the storm. Amelia isn’t sure this be called a word as simple as _pain_. It is big enough to make the monsters of her nightmares run. It is earth-shattering. It is world ending. She’s been prepared for a lot in her life. 

But she has never been ready for this. 

Owen still isn’t speaking, it’s silent. There’s so much echoing silence around her and Amelia wants to scream. She wants to scream because that silence is what she needs in her head, anything to drown out that smile. His smile and his laugh and _you’re my favourite sister_ and _I’ve always wanted to protect you_ and _who is dead? Derek. Derek. Derek._

Maybe it will kill her, this pain. If she was brave enough to let herself feel it, she thinks it might actually kill her. 

“That's the thing. I really actually might.” Taunting. She might. She would. If he hadn’t come- “I have been sober for one thousand three hundred and twenty-one days, Owen.” It’s something to be proud of, she knows this. But the only thing other than numb is pain, so pride does not get a turn today. “I was fine, it was _managed_.” 

_Was,_ being the key word here. Managed. How do you manage this? How do you manage a supernova, how do you manage? How does the world keep turning with no centre? 

_Who is dead?_

_Derek._

Those are the only words that play out in her dreams anymore, Owen’s words actually. 

“But I might.”

There’s something bitter and raw and so razor fucking sharp in her voice, and silence stretches again. Owen looks at her for a long moment, gaze clear. 

“All that stuff you’re _managing-_ ” She doesn’t move as he throws back her own words, just stares at him. “You’re not supposed to be managing it. You’re supposed to be feeling it. Grief, loss, pain. It is normal.”

She does laugh then, and it is something that sounds just broken enough to make her heart flinch. The anger is back now, burning and raging and _screaming._

“It’s not _normal_.”

God. God it’s not normal this should not be normal, this should never be normal because this is going to _rip her apart_ and-

“It is. It is normal.” Amelia shakes her head and turns away then. He follows her, getting in front of her again, stopping her in her tracks. “It’s not normal to you because you’ve never _done_ it. Instead of feeling it, of feeling the grief, and the pain, you’ve shoved it all down and you do drugs instead. Instead of moving _through_ the pain, you run from it.”

Well, he’s not wrong there. She’s always run from it, that’s nothing new. The next words he says are a blur. _We’re_ _supposed to feel._

She isn’t sure she wants to. 

_Don’t extinguish it._

Amelia meets Owen’s eyes again, and the burning rage has dimmed a little, enough to make her frown to make sense of what she wants to say. She doesn't get it, it doesn't make sense. 

She knows she’s smart, she’s always been smart. But no part of her DNA has ever been coded to be able to understand _this_. 

“Derek died.”

Owen nods, and the cracks in her universe widen. They’re breaking apart, they’re opening up, except there’s nothing there anymore because the centre is gone. Amelia knows that it can’t shift or move, knows that all too well.

So now she’s just falling with it.

“He died.”

It hits then, as the cracks splinter, it hits her like a physical blow to the chest as something like a scream builds in her throat. She shoves it down, shoves it down _hard_ because she’s not ready for this, she’s never going to be ready for this. 

“I don't want to feel it, I just- I don't think I can.” Owen is still looking at her with those eyes and there’s such a roaring in her ears- “I don't think I even want to- I can’t.” Not this. Not this. “I can’t do this.”

Owen steps closer and she backs away. Fight or flight. Fight or flight. She wants to run and never stop running. She pulls the bag out of her pocket again, and she can’t breathe or think or move but maybe this will make the pain _stop-_

“Amelia. You have to. If you don't-”

 _Run run run run. “_ No I can’t. I can't _do this”_

“You have to.” He’s raising his voice now, desperation tinging it. “If you don’t, that bag of oxy is not going to be your last.”

Silence. Such echoing silence. 

Slowly, she looks at Owen, looks at the bag in her hand. 

If she goes down this road again, she doesn’t know if she’ll survive it. 

Jake Reilly. God, she hasn’t thought about him in over a year. But it’s his words floating back to her now. 

_I know this tunnel is long, and it is dark. But If you don’t use, the tunnel will end, and the light will come back in._

_If you use, the tunnel never ends._

She looks at Owen again, and he looks right back, unfaltering. 

There are ten achingly long seconds of silence. And then Amelia holds the bag out to him, and she knows he can hear the silent plea. 

_Take it._

Owen’s fingers brush hers as he takes the pills from her hands, and the last crack finally shatters the wall.

A strangled scream tears out of her, nine months worth of pain and _grief_ spiralling up and out in one go. Her knees buckle with the weight of it all and Owen drops to the floor with her, catching her as the world falls apart. 

His arms wrap around her and he’s holding her too tight, but she’s drowning and he’s the only thing keeping the shattered pieces together. She clings to him, desperate for something solid, something to anchor her as the grief sweeps her away, tears her apart. 

It’s wrong, it’s all wrong because Derek has always been the one holding her together and anchoring her, and this is wrong because now he’s _gone._

Owen is saying things, repeating words that she doesn’t hear. The numb is gone, and it’s just wave after wave after wave crashing down as she cries and the tears keep coming, knees pressed against the hard wood of the deck

But she’s alive. She’s breathing. She can’t breathe but she’s still breathing. 

Life will out, that's what she's always liked to say.

_The tunnel will end._

She’s gripping Owen’s shoulders tight enough to hurt, but he doesn’t say a thing, just picks up the pieces and holds her together through sheer force of will. 

_Breathe._

_Breathe._

_Breathe._

Slowly, Amelia remembers how to inhale. The air is freezing, too cold. It’s cold tonight, dancing the line between winter and spring. 

In and out. 

They’re shaking breaths, everything hurts, her heart is racing fast enough to make her head spin, and she thinks she’s going to be sick, but she’s breathing. 

The universe collapsed, but she’s still here. 

She stays with him there for hours, crumpled on the freezing cold surface of the deck until there is nothing left to cry, until it’s just exhausted silence and an endless, endless ache in her bones.

She hasn’t spoken for a while, her throat feels raw, eyes aching. She can barely get a breath past the weight in her chest, and the pain is still razor sharp every time she inhales. 

But it’s not numb. She’s feeling it, and it feels like the world is ending, and maybe it is, but it’s not numb.

It’s not extinguished.

Right now, that’s enough. 

Amelia lifts her head from Owen’s shoulder just as the first rays of sunlight start to brush the horizon. 

.

Slowly, the tunnel widens out. It’s days, months, years even, but it’s widening. 

And slowly, so slowly that Amelia barely notices it happening, the light starts to come back in.

**Author's Note:**

> basically me attempting to outdo krista vernoff in the Causing Of Pain department for 7k words, but minus the shitty brain tumor storyline. 
> 
> (you can find me on tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/wordsxstars))


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